Building the CIARD Framework for Data and Information Sharing
Newsletter date: 27/05/2011
There is a growing movement to make data and information in the public domain more accessible and effectively used. The CIARD movement advocates, promotes and supports making agricultural research information in the public domain not only available but more easily accessible, applicable and effectively used. The Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR) has been a leading partner of CIARD.
In addition to the current global challenges of eradicating extreme hunger and reducing poverty, the world faces new challenges in agriculture. Research to solve these challenges requires sharing not only information such as documents, maps, photographs, video and audio recordings but also raw data that can be used contextually as needed by communities and countries. CIARD, recognizing this vital issue, has initiated building a framework for data and information sharing in ARD which it hopes to present to the international community at GCARD 2012. In April 2011, it organized an e-consultation “The CIARD Framework for Data and Information Sharing” using the e-agriculture platform.
The e-consultation had more than 400 contributions from participants from 162 countries and more than 9000 views. The e-consultation suggested that the framework has to consider issues including:
• Enabling more open data repositories and standards;
• Enabling national and institutional policies that contribute to more open
availability, accessibility, applicability and effective use of data and information
from public domain agricultural research at all levels from global to local
communities;
• Building new capacities to generate, manage and publish data and information
more openly;
• Creating “meta-data” or descriptive data using standard vocabularies and
“amalgamators” of these meta-data, leveraging concepts such as of “Linked Data”
through URLs, developing core data sets that may be useful in meeting the ARD
challenges;
• Considering institutional concerns about the use of their data especially in
intellectual property and ownership; and
• Considering the underlying need of collaboration and partnership in managing
ARD data and information.
CIARD partners have already contributed many components suggested for the framework. CIARD has a manifesto that its partners have adopted to pursue, a “checklist” that highlights what should be done to improve actions in achieving enhanced availability and accessibility of data and information. AGROVOC and AIMS offer the vocabularies and standards for agricultural data and information. Agrotagger and similar tools offer automated tagging, indexing and classification of information. The CIARD Fair demonstrates and enables access to individual tools and applications that contribute to the CIARD objectives. The CIARD.RING is now an established “amalgamator” and search engine of agriculture related information in the public domain.
The e-consultation is now being followed up with an International Experts Consultation in Beijing from 20-23 June 2011. The International Experts Consultation is being hosted by the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, GFAR and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and is being organized by CIARD partners. The issues raised during the e-consultation and other new issues related to making agricultural research information in the public domain not only available but more easily accessible, applicable and effectively used are further expected to be considered in depth by invited experts which will then lead to the development of a draft framework for data and information sharing to be considered for adoption by the global ARD community.
An interesting set of presentations, including that of Dr. Tim Berners-Lee, on topic can be seen at: http://linkedinfo.ikmemergent.net/.
This week's announcements:
- CGIAR SCIENCE FORUM 2011
The Independent Science and Partnership Council (ISPC) of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) is pleased to announce Science Forum 2011, which will be held from October 17-19 in Beijing. This event is organized by the ISPC in cooperation with the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR) and the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
The biennial CGIAR Science Forum brings together scientists, policymakers, funding agents and other stakeholders to redouble and refocus efforts to address the challenge of meeting global food needs. The theme of Science Forum 2011 is the Agriculture – Environment Nexus. Interactive sessions will explore ways to achieve increases in food production while maintaining healthy ecosystems. Sessions will focus on resource scarcity, eco-efficient agriculture and other issues.
For further information, please visit http://www.sciencecouncil.cgiar.org or see the attached brochure.
- Workshop on Coherence in Information for Agricultural Research for Development (CIARD) and Strengthening RAIS in the SAARC CountriesA Training Workshop on Coherence in Information for Agricultural Research for Development (CIARD) and Strengthening RAIS in the SAARC Countries was organized jointly by SAARC Agriculture Centre (SAC), APAARI, Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC), FAO and GFAR at SAC, BARC Campus in Dhaka from 10-13 May 2011. The purpose of the workshop was to improve capacities for Information and Communication Management (ICM) among national systems for agricultural research and innovation using concepts, pathways, tools and applications developed and made accessible under the Coherence in Information for Agricultural research for Development (CIARD).....(read more).
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